So I borrowed this DVD from a buddy a few months ago and it did almost nothing but piss me off, for the following reasons:
#1: A completely unrealistic portrayal of what combat is like in this GWOT we’re fighting. Following an enemy bait car down an alley? Clearing a building as a one man team? Please. I know recruiting standards have been lowered and all, but give us credit for a little more common sense than that.
#2: A completely unrealistic portrayal of what a stop-loss really is. It doesn’t happen like that. Never. I got stop-lossed myself before my second deployment. Wanna know something? I was glad for it. That meant I could put off re-enlisting for a few months until I got overseas, where my re-enlistment bonus was tax free.
#3: A completely unrealistic portrayal of PTSD. Digging foxholes in the front yard? What!?! We’re not engaged in linear warfare with the Germans here. I never dug a foxhole outside of a training exercise, anyway. PTSD is much deeper and much more subtle than just fictional flashbacks.
Toward the end of the movie, I almost started to like it. The movie finishes with the main character getting past his personal fear and deciding to deploy again with his buddies, where he belonged. Follow that with a series of anti-army post-scripts to ruin any positive message the film may have been reaching for, and I definitely became a hater of this movie.
On a lark I got that from Netflix. Tried watching it but 30-40 minutes into the movie was as far as I could get.
No relation, glad to see that we all hated the little piece of Hollywood propoganda. No self-respecting idiot should endure the whole movie, but I give you props for seeing the end of that piece of crap.
I have no interest in what Hollywood says about the war to this point. But I echo the Monk, kudos for watching it and thanks for the report.
…and it is good to have the drunken vet back among us.